#575: Neil Gaiman — The Interview I've Waited 20 Years to Do (Repost)

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No Hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. I'm so excited. Because I'm about to share with you An interview that I waited twenty plus years. Mm.

Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman. Who's Neil Gaiman? Neil's been one of my favorite authors Forever I first became fascinated by his imagination with the sandman. Comics. Graphic novels in the nineties, so much so, in fact, that I imported versions from different countries to help me learn foreign languages. My love for his work grew from there, from Anansi Boys to the Graveyard Book, which happens to be my favorite audiobook of all time, read by Neil, to Neverware I've Never Been Disappointed.

And Neil has won just about every award in every genre he's tackled, including Nebula and Hugo Awards, and his voice, as you will hear, is Radio Perfect Hypnotic. Since my very first podcast episode, back when this show did not even have a name, friends have asked me who is on your list of dream guests? And Neil has always been in my top five. Oprah's another. We'll get to that another time. Sadly, Neil very rarely does interviews, but after close to a decade, I'm not making that up, of soft touches via Twitter and elsewhere, he finally agreed to sit down with me for around ninety, hundred and twenty minutes, somewhere in there, and get into all the details I could have ever dreamed of and more. I never thought it would actually happen, and it did.

It's it's I'm still on cloud nine and find it. Very surreal, to be honest. And in any case, if you listen to even a few minutes of this, you'll understand why I'm such a fan. And I'm gonna read uh a bit more of his official bio and then we're gonna get right into it. But just listen to the range in this bio when it comes to creative fiction and nonfiction. Neil Gaiman is the best selling author and creator of books, graphic novels, short stories, film and television for all ages, including Neverware, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, The View from the Cheapse, and The Sandman series of graphic.

novels. His fiction has received Newberry and Carnegie medals, and Hugo Nebula, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker and Will Eisner Awards, among many other awards and honors. His novelistic retelling of Norse myths titled Norse Mythology has been a phenomenon and an international bestseller, and he won his ninth Audi Award for that. That is for best narration by the author. Nine, nine Audio Wards, and y you'll you'll get a taste of his voice and why people enjoy it so much. Recently, Gaiman wrote all six episodes of and has been the full time showrunner for the forthcoming BBC Amazon Prime mini series adaptation of Good Omens, based on the beloved nineteen ninety book. he co wrote with Terry Pratchett. Fantastic Fantastic book and I've set up a redirect so you guys can find the trailer for this really easily. If you just go to Tim.blog forward slash omens. That's Tim.blog forward slash omens. It'll point right to the trailer for this, which you guys should check out.

Many of Gaiman's books and comics have been adapted for film and television, including Stardust. starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, Coraline, an Academy Award nominee, and the BAFTA winner for Best Animated Film, and How to Talk to Girls at Parties, a movie based on Gaiman's short story. The television series Lucifer is based on characters created by Gaiman and Sandman. His two thousand one novel, American Gods, is a critically acclaimed Emmy nominated T V series now entering its second season. In two thousand seventeen, Neil Gimm became a goodwill ambassador for UNHCR the UN Refugee Agency.

Originally from England, he lives in the United States, where he is Professor in the Arts at Bard College. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram at Neil Himself, Facebook. forward slash Neil Gaiman and at Neilgaman dot com. And without further ado, my apologies for the long intro, but it's Very warranted in this case. given the excitement on my part. Here is

Neil. Game. Neil, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much. I have been

Hoping to have this conversation for years. And uh with I flashback for you know ten, fifteen Probably twenty plus years. I've been reading your work. I can't say that about many people I've ever met.

And I mean you've been asking me Incredibly politely, um, if I could do the podcast or anything vaguely edging around it and giving me open invitations for a for a good decade now. This is true. Um I uh you know and and I love the fact we've managed to do

The occasional tiny goofy thing. I got I got to do Read a page of your book. That's right. That's right. You wrote a page of the book, which was incredible because I find your voice, as many people do, uh, rather hypnotic. And Then we got to do a very short uh chapter in Tribe Mentors, the last book. Thank you very much for answering those questions. And uh it's it's just such a such a thrill.

To be able to spend time with you. I'm loving it. And I th I thought we could begin with the The glorious beginnings. And maybe uh for those people who can't see this. I'll give some context. I have not just one recorder.

But two, three, four different sets of audio. And that's in part because I was Uh or M once bitten twice shy when it comes to Audio. And then you shared.

One of your early days. What happened? When I was fifteen. I really wanted to meet and talk to

Writers and artists I admired. And I Couldn't figure out how you did this. I didn't know about conventions, if there were conventions back in Yeah, nineteen seventy five, seventy six.

Um Yeah. So I had a brilliant idea. I would start a magazine.

The magazine, as far as I was concerned, didn't even have to exist. The fact that it went on to exist was really fun. And we call it Metro. Um Which was a name I came up with because it sounded like a magazine. It it didn't just sound like a magazine, it sounded like a magazine that you have heard of. And I love the fact that

Over the years. Metro magazines around the world actually do exist now. But in nineteen seventy five They didn't, but I could phone up and say what from Metro magazine and people would go, Oh yeah. Um and you know, our voices had broken. So over the phone nobody knew that we were fifteen. Um

And I remember interviewing uh Michael Mocock. Uh who was An author whose work.

I loved with with my friend Dave Dixon, who told me recently he just found the tape. And is uh threatening to put it up as some kind of glorious podcast, which I I really hope he does. Um Fifteen year old Neil Gaiman and Dave Dixon interviewing Michael Moorcock.

Um But the the one that Taught me my lesson. was the I think it was the second interview we did.

Warcock was the first. Um And it was Roger Dean. Roger Dean is an artist and designer. most famous back then for the covers of Yes albums, this beautiful sort of calligraphy and these floating islands and things like that. And I got talking to some kid on the train who said, Oh yeah

You know, I know Roger Dean. And so we phoned up Roger Dean's publisher, which was basically Roger Dean, uh I think they were called Dragon's Dream. And uh said, you know. Like to interview Roger.

Went down to Brighton. Um I remember the sheer amazement and joy. Of These

Paintings. That were as far as I was concerned iconic Religious emblems. They they were you know I I And I didn't like yes very much. In fact, I didn't really like much of the music that he'd done covers to, but I had a copy of his book, Views, and just loved it. There was a painting he did of some badges. Um, there was just these Things um

It it felt very Lord of the Rings, it felt very fantastical. And there were these amazing paintings covered in dust. Propped up against walls. And we interviewed him. And at the end of the interview I noticed that the tape wasn't going round.

Um Got home. played it and you can hear there's thirty seconds Of us talking. There's thirty seconds of us talking in

Higher and higher pitched voices. Faster and faster like mad chipmunks and then it stops. And that was the Roger Dean interview. And I And the great thing about that was when Seven years later. I really was a journalist. I really was going around interviewing people. I was interviewing people for magazines that

Existed. And um You know, had existed before. We decided to do the interviews and things. Um I always carried spare batteries. I always carried spare tapes.

Um If I could. You know, at the point where I could afford to I even carried a spare micro cassette recorder. Just in case. Just in case.

Two is one and one is none, as they say sometimes, and So the gods the gods gifted you. With a malfunction early. Exactly. One good malfunction and you learn your lesson. It is that pain thing. And we were chatting before we sat down to record As I was gathering. Copious beverages, water and tea and and so on for us.

I'm using the royal ass, I suppose. Mostly for me. And I got water too. And we were talking about This location downtown where we're sitting. And I've I've decided in the last few years to use locations outside of my home. for a lot of what I do because I've I've found it Uh that is it being sitting at my kitchen table doing a lot to sometimes produce a malaise.

This is just the odd association or lack of dissociation between work and home. And I had read at one point that Maya Angelou, and I hope I'm getting that pronunciation right, would rent hotel rooms. to work on a lot of Uh her writing.

And uh then you brought up another name. So um Back in about nineteen ninety seven. I read an article. By Ian Fleming.

Who wrote the James Bond books. About how he wrote the James Bond books. And you read this article and you realise something, which is Ian Fleming did not enjoy the process of writing. Um I was always fascinated by the fact that that

Several of Rold Dahl's most famous short stories. Were plotted. By Ian Fleming. Really? Yeah, he gave Doll um. The two best short story twists.

Which are lamb to the slaughter where the woman Kills her husband with a leg of lamb. And then cooks it. Um and feeds it to the detective who is going, I cannot figure out what he was hit with.

Uh is an Ian Fleming plot. And so is the one about the evil antique dealer. Who finds this amazing antique. Um Um You know, uh on some farm and decides to cheat.

The farmers. And explains that well the thing isn't worth any money, but the legs. The legs are are worth some money, so I'll uh I'll give you a you know Twenty quid for the legs. Um and is about to take away this million pound

Uh antique thing. And the farmers helpfully rip off the legs and throw the rest of it away. And uh and those plots were both the end plannings. And you start realizing ah, you really don't like writing when you read his thing on how he wrote the James Bond books. Uh You write a James Bond book in two weeks.

You check into a hotel. You have to check into a hotel somewhere that you don't want to be, otherwise you might go out and walk around and become a tourist. You have to check into a not terribly nice hotel room, otherwise you might luxuriate and enjoy it. And instead what you want to be is focused on getting out.

And then You having nothing else to do in this town in this place You settle down and you write like a fiend. And you get your James Bond book written in two weeks and you leave this horrible hotel room. And that was how he did it. And I

Have tried it a couple of times. I did it with the American draft of Neverware. That was the first one I ever tried. And I did the entire sort of American draft, which was the big second draft. The book had already been published in the UK. But my American editor wanted stuff.

Done. Because she pointed out that The book as it existed. Knew that Oxford Street was a big

Street with lots of shops on it. Or whatever. They w it was written for Brits and Londoners. And she wanted something Expanded. So I expanded it.

Um And I was in a room With As far as I remember, no windows. In the

I think it was a Marriott in the World Trade Center. And um Which Is no longer there. But writing in that hotel room, you just wanted to be out.

It it it seems to me, and uh you can't believe everything you read on the internet, so I I want you to s certainly fact check me as needed, but that you you also have or have had some internal rules. So you can you can use your external Environment. To assist but but I read Uh

That And again, feel free to correct, but making rules, the importance of making rules. Rules like you can sit here and write or you can sit here and do nothing, but you can't sit here and do anything else. That was always and still is, when I go off to write. That's my biggest rule. Could you speak to that? Yeah,'cause Um, I would go down to my

Lovely little gazebo. The bottom of the garden. Sit down. And I'm absolutely allowed not to do anything.

I'm allowed to sit at my desk. I'm allowed to Stare out at the world, I'm allowed to do anything I like. As long as it isn't Anything. Not allowed to do a cross word, not allowed to read a book.

Allowed to You know. I I

All I'm allowed to do is absolutely nothing alright. And What I love about that is I'm giving myself permission to write or not write. But writing is actually more interesting than doing nothing. After a while.

You know, you sort of sit there and You've been staring out of the window now for five minutes and it kind of loses its charm. You're going, Well, actually Might as well write something. And um

And it's hard. I'm as a writer I'm more easily You know, I'm distractable. Um

I have a three year old son. He is the epitome. Oh Cuteness and charm. He's it's more fun playing with him. than it is writing. Which means if I'm gonna be writing I need to do it somewhere where I don't have A three year old

Sun Singing to me, asking me to read to him, demanding my attention. Um And I think that's a I think it's a really just a solid rule. It's like yeah.

You don't have To right. You have permission. To not write. But you don't have permission.

It reminds me of um Another one of my favorite writers. You being the one who's sitting in front of me.

Uh John McFee. Nonfiction writer. Uh who has spent much of his life in Princeton, New Jersey, but has written some incredible Uh Pilzer Prize winning nonfiction.

And I was lucky enough to take a class with him. Yeah. And His His rule was very similar, but he didn't state it explicitly. He would sit in front of his first

as a young man typewriter. You could sit in front of the blank page and from eight AM to six PM with the exception of a break for lunch. And swimming. It was the blank page you're writing. And it's disallowed from doing anything else.

Are there any other rules or practices That you also hold. Sacred or important for your writing process? Some of them Uh just

Things for me. For example. Um Most of the time. Not always. I will do

My first draft. In Fountain pen. Um because I actually enjoy the process of writing with a fountain pen. I like the um

I like filling. A fountain pen. I like Uncapping it. I like the weight of it in my hand. I I like that thing. So I'll have a notebook. Um

I'll have a fountain pen. And I'll write. If I'm doing anything long I'm working on a novel, for example. I will always have two fountain pens on the go.

At least with two different coloured inks. At least. Because that way I can see at a glance how much work I did that day. I can just look down and go, look at that. Five pages in brown. I that I wrote that. Half a page in black. That was not a good day.

Um Nine pages in blue co that was a what a great day. And I I You can just sort of get a sense of okay, are you Are you working, are you making forward progress? Um

What's actually happening? And I also love that because Mm. emphasizes for me that nobody is ever meant to read your first draft. Your first draft can go way off the rails. Your first draft can

Absolutely. go up in flames. It can You can change The age, gender, number of a character

Um, you can bring somebody dead back to life. Nobody ever needs to know anything that happens in your first draft. Is you Telling the story to yourself. And then I'll sit down and type. And I'll put it onto a computer. Um as far as I'm concerned, the second draft

Is where I try and make it look like I knew what I was doing all along. Do you edit? Then as you're looking or translating from the first draft on the page To the computer or do you get it all down? As is.

In the computer and then edit upon the computer. No, I I definitely that's my editing process. I figure that's my second draft. is typing into the computer. And also I love Um So backing up a bit here. Um

When I was What was I? Twenty seven, twenty eight. In the days when we were still in typewriters. And there were just a handful of people with word processors, which were clunky things with discs which didn't hold very much and stuff.

I edited an anthology. And uh Enjoyed editing my told you and most of the stories that came in were about three thousand words long. Move forward in time. Not much.

Five, six, seven years. Mid nineties. Everybody is now On computer. And I edited an another short story anthology. And the stories that were coming in

Tended to be somewhere between six and nine thousand words long. And they didn't really have much more story than the three thousand words. One. And I realized that what was happening Is It's a it's a sort of a computery

Thing. Is If you're typing Putting stuff down is work. If you've got a computer.

Adding stuff is not work. Choosing. His work. So it sort of expands a bit like a gas if you have Two

Things you could say, you say both of them. If you're the stuff you want to add, you add it. And And I thought, okay, I have to know. Do that.

Because otherwise my stuff is gonna balloon. And it will become a little bit more. Gaseous and thin. Um So what I love

If I've written something on a computer. And I decide To lose a chunk. It feels like I've lost work. Hm. If I delete a page and a half, I feel like there's a page and a half. They just went away.

And that that's a page and a half's worth of work I've just lost. If I've been writing in a notebook. And I'm typing it up. And I can look at

I mean go I I don't need this page and a half. And I leave it out. I've just saved myself work and it feels kind of Like I'm I'm Treating myself.

So I'm I just trying to always Have in my head the idea that maybe I'm Somehow on some cosmic level paying somebody by the word

In order to be allowed to write. Yeah. But if they're there they they should matter they should mean something. It's always important to me. And you mentioned uh you mentioned.

Distraction earlier. And you're A dangerously adorable son. Yeah. Uh which which I certainly agree with. Uh

I had read somewhere. Actually Um No. Before I get to that, this this might seem like a very, very mundane

question, but what type of notebooks do you prefer? Are they large, like legal pads, or they Leatherbound? What type of notebooks? Um when they came out I really like

I I've used a whole bunch of different ones. I bought big drawing ones, which actually turned out to be a bit too big. Well I kind of liked how much I could see on the page. Uh those were the ones I wrote Stardust and um and American Gods in sort of you know big size. But they weren't terribly portable. I went over

To the moleskins. Um And I loved them when they first came out and then they dropped their paper quality. And dropping paper quality Doesn't matter unless you're writing in fountain pen.

Because all of a sudden It's bleeding through and all of a sudden you're writing on One page. Leaving a page blank because it's bled through and writing on the next page. Um

And Joe Hill about Uh six or seven years ago. Uh Joe Hill, the the Wonderful horror fantasy writer. Um

Suggested the Loichturm. To me. And um So my usual notebook right now is a Loichturm because

I really like the the way you can paginate stuff in them. And the thickness of the paper. And they're just like sort of moleskins, but but the Porsche of moleskins. They're they're just better. And I also have been writing I wrote the graveyard book. And I'm writing the current novel.

In a uh These Beautiful books. That I bought In a

Stationer shop in Venice. Um built into a bridge. Somewhere in Venice there's a there's a little stationary s shop on a bridge. And they have these beautiful leather bound blank books that just look like hardback books, but

Yeah. Blank paper pages. And uh I wrote the graveyard book in one of those I bought four of them. And

No I'm Using the next one on the next novel. And it may well go into another. One. Um

I'm not sure. And then At home. In um I think say um at home. Um, my house in Wisconsin. Which

Is where my stuff is. You know I've I've got my We live in Woodstock. Um but I have an entire life's worth of stuff. Still sitting in my house and

In Wisconsin. And it It's become archives. It's You know, it's actually kind of fabulous having a house that is an archive. Um

But waiting for me in that house. is a book that I bought for myself about twenty five years ago. And before I die, I plan to write a novel. Amen. Um

And it's an accounts book. From The mid Nineteenth century. It's five hundred pages long, every page.

Is is Numbered. Um It's um Line with

Accounts lines, but very faint, so It'll be nice to write a book in it. And it is engineered so that every single page lies flat. And it's huge and it's heavy, and it just looks like a book.

Yeah. You know, Dickens or somebody would have written A novel in Um I've just been waiting until I have an idea.

That is huge and weird and Dekenzian enough. And um Whether or not I actually get to write it in dip pen, I'm not sure, but I definitely want to write it in in a sort of Um Old Victorian something slightly copper platey, one of those old flex nib pens that they stopped making when carbon paper came in.

Um just So I can get that kind of spidery Victorian handwriting. I'm just imagining you putting pen To the first page, when you finish the first page and what that will feel like. That's gonna be a good day. It will it will be either a good day or an incredibly bad day. So I'll get to the end of the first page and Oh no, I have this pristine But it is it it is the

The Thing that I tell Young writers. And by young writers, a young writer can be any age. You just have to be s starting out. Um Which is

Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is is The perfection of a blank page. But you cannot fix Is that Christine unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it,'cause there's nothing there to fix.

You mentioned a word, and it might be that I'm A little slow moving because I'm from Long Island, but Leichtum? How do you spell? That way. L E I

I think it's T U R M Ah I got it. Yeah. And then nineteen seventeen, I think, is the the Uh their Twitter handle is definitely Likedum nineteen seventeen. Since you gave me Uh

And I'm not intending to turn this episode into a shopping list, but I've never used fountain pens. Really? I have not. And my my uh assistant, my dear assistant, uh does. She loves using fountain pen. She enjoys the act. I've I've had uh a few sloppy false starts and then been rather impatient. But if I wanted to give it a shot, are there any particular fountain pens or Criteria.

That you would use in picking. Um good pen. You know the biggest criteria I would use In picking up. Um If you have the choice.

Is go somewhere like New York's fountain pen hospital. Um Is that a real place? It's a real place. It's called the Fountain Pen Hospital. They sell lots of new pens, they recondition old pens, they they look after pens for you. Um And try them out. Because the lovely thing about fountain pens is they are personal. You you you go, No, no, no, and then you find the one.

Um I tend to suggest to people who are Um Just nervously

You know, I I've never used a fountain pen, what should I do? And I will point them at Lumi, L A M Y Um who have Some fabulous starter pens. And they're not very expensive and they're good. Uh they do a pen called the Lo the Safari But they have a bunch of

Good Good start appears. And they're just nice. T. to get into the idea of do I like doing this? Um

The um Let's see, what am I using right now? Um I got it. I've got So

Um This one here is a pilot. Um It's a Namiki and it's a fleb.

Ever so slightly when you Put down weight on it. The uh The nibble spread. Um

Beautiful, beautiful pen. Um So that one's a pilot. I think this one here is the Namiki. And it's really weird because Namiki is pilot, so I I don't quite understand that. This is a Maybe it's a sort of Toyota Lexus thing. I think it is. It's that kind of thing.

Um This one here is Called a falcon. And again You put a little bit of weight on it and the line will just spread and thicken, which is part of the fun.

Um Oh. Fountain pens. Um And I will just

You know, I'll I'll go and play. Uh, there's a lovely Italian one. I got my a my agent. I did a thing. Some years ago. When I realized that

I was Losing a lot of actual writing time. To signing foreign contracts. And um This is for books. This is for books. Or occasionally, you know, for stories or for things being reprinted.

Around the world. And the contract would come in. And that would be Thing. Sheaves of them.

Because I get printed all around the world and foreign contracts, a lot of them you have to sign a lot. You have to do a lot of initialing and And I would sit there going. I have just spent Ninety minutes signing a pile of contracts. And I love that I got to sign it, but

So I contacted my agent. I said, Can I give you like power of attorney? Would you mind just Can you just sign these things for me? And she's like, Absolutely. Right. So I got her She'd never used a fountain pen and I got her a fountain pen. I actually went to

uh the New York Fountain Pen hospital with her. And did the thing of showing her pens and going, What do you like? And then and I got her a Visconti. Um which is Just these lovely Italian pens.

Um And Mostly I love The sort of the slightly fetishistic bit of having bottles of beautifully colored ink. When you start talking to fountain pen people. They they they

Really. They pretend to be interested. In what pen you like. But they don't care because they found their own pens that they love. And they say, What do you use? And and I You know, I use pilot eight two three's.

For signing pet. And and I actually now I bought a pilot eight two three. Um'cause it's just a fantastic signing pen. It's a work course, it keeps going. And I got one in twenty twelve.

And it was my signing pen. I sign through Ocean at the end of the lane, you know Before the book had come out I had already pre signed You know. written my signature twenty thousand times with this pen. I've seen footage of you icing your hand after some signings. That was the signing tour that I really got into icing my hand because and wrist and arm. Um

And You know, I I did the numbers and as far as I can tell I have signed about one and a half million signatures with that pen. Uh which remain and I had to send it off to Pilot at one point, not because the nib

was in trouble because the the plunger mechanism was starting to stick and they Fixed it for me and sent it back. And then my three year old son. Found a place Behind a cast iron fireplace.

Uh in our house in Woodstock where if you Just In so Your father's Pilot Eight Two Three Pen, which you have found on the table. Just to see if it would go in there.

You can actually guarantee that nobody W without disassembling the house. I mean we actually have to take the entire house apart. Um To uninstall a cast iron fireplace from nineteen thirteen. To get at the pen. That is that pen now has been given

As a sacrifice to the house gods, and I need to get a new one. It it strikes me. Uh at least it it seems as we're talking that Many of the Decisions you've made, the tools you've found and enlisted.

Uh Act to make Not writing. Unappealing. Or at least boring after five minutes. And to and to sort of enhance the active writing to make it something

That is enjoyable. I don't I don't know if that is true, and but they also exist for another reason, which is kind of weird. Which is to try and trivialize What I'm doing and not make it Important.

and freighted down with weight. Because that paralyses me. Mm. Um When I started writing I had a typewriter.

It's a manual typewriter. When I sold my first book I had the money. To buy

An electric typewriter. Um What was that first book? Uh Gosh.

I actually don't remember whether I bought the electric typewriter with the money From a book called Ghastly Beyond Belief. Book of science fiction and fantasy quotations I did with Kim Newman or Whether I Did It Whether it was um For

Uh the Duran Duran biography that I did. Either way, I was just twenty three. And um And what I would do back then is I would do my rough draft. On scrap paper. Single spaced. So that it couldn't be used.

Um and also so that I could get as many words on and Yeah. Paper was expensive. Um And then So so I could always do that.

And I remember the joy of getting my first computer. And just the idea that I wasn't making paper dirty. Nothing mattered until I press print. And that was absolutely and utterly liberating. Um

And then You know, a decade on. Picking up. A Notebook.

It was for star dust. But which I decided. That I wanted the rhythms of Stardust. And I thought I

There's probably a difference to the way that one writes. With a fountain pen. Um Seventeenth century writing, seventeenth, eighteenth century writing. Um

You notice Tends to go In very, very long sentences and long paragraphs. And I My theory about this

Is that one reason why You get this is because you're using dip pens and if you pause They they dry up. So you just have to kind of keep going. It forces you to do a kind of writing where you're just You're going for a very long sentence and you're gonna go over a long paragraph and you're gonna

Keep moving in this thing, and you're sort of thinking ahead. Um With If you're writing on a computer You'll

Think of the sort of thing that you mean. And write that down and then look at it and then fiddle with it. And get it. To be The thing that you mean.

You're writing in fountain pen, if you do that you just wind up with a page covered with Crossings out. So it's actually so much easier. Um

Think a little bit more. You you you slow up a bit. But you're thinking the sentence through to the end. And then Then you start writing. You write that.

And then you pause and then you write the next one. Um At least that was the way that I I Hypothesised I might be writing. And I wanted

Uh Stardust to feel like it had been written In the late nineteen twenties. Um, and I thought well to do that. I should probably get myself Hey uh

A fountain pen and a book. And that so that was how I started writing that. And again what I loved was suddenly feeling liberated. It's like ah, I'm not actually making Words are not going down in phosphor on a computer screen.

The the this trivializing is um I think very, very important. Uh and I'd I'd love to to dig into it a little bit because this is um Something that's come up quite a bit. Initially very unexpectedly with with people I interview on the podcast. I remember having a conversation with Sean White, legendary snowboarder.

And I asked him what he said to himself, What was his internal monologue or dialogue right before the gate opened for the last run in the Olympics for the gold medal. And his answer was who cares? Which surprised me. And he said, Yeah, because if if In effect, dude, if I apply an incredible amount of weight to myself, it's going to do nothing but handicap me. And you do see

Or are there many examples of of writers, of musicians who have such crumbled with sophomore syndrome after a success and had great difficulty put putting out work. You've put out a lot of very, very good work. I've I've read and listened to and watched a lot of your work. What are other things you do to Remove that weight.

If anything, are there things you say to yourself when you commit to writing a book, when you s when you sign the agreement with the publisher for yet another novel Um is th is there any other advice that you would give or any other things that you do that help to remove the sort of psychological Um Performance anxiety.

Well if you're me You tend to do the things that are not actually Um Financially sensible. But

Make life easier. I write I like writing things. Then nobody's waiting for. It's much more stressful writing things that people actually are waiting for.

That people care about. Um It's why. It felt Wonderful.

Two Follow American Gods up with Caroline. Nobody even knew that I wanted to be a kids author. And it was an odd kind of thing to be and I've just written this

Yeah. Giant novel that's won all of the awards. And it's Incredibly adult and it's thick. And it's a

Proper boat. and look, I got the Hugo and look, I got the Nebula and so on and so forth. And then Um Here's the book nobody's waiting for. So did you work on so you worked on that before

Anyone knew you in in other words, you hadn't set expectations. Caroline was written, I thought Caroline was unpublishable. In fact I was told it was initially. Um And uh I I Started it for my kids. My daughter in particular, Holly.

Um I showed it to an English editor who told me it was completely unpublishable. Uh we move to America. Um

The idea was that I was writing in my own time, but I didn't have any own time. Somewhere in there I sent it to my friend Jane Yolan. I mentioned to Jane it was an amazing children's Um Author but also at the time. was editing a line of books and

She showed it to she wanted to buy it and the people upstairs Um The publishing house said absolutely not. And and you know, this was just the first third of Caroline. It hadn't even got bad yet. Um And uh

And I put it away. And then A few years on I looked around and realised I now had another daughter, I now had Maddie, and she was a baby And she was getting bigger and if I didn't finish that book you know, his this book I started for Holly and now Holly's too old almost and And I needed to finish it, so I sent it to my new editor.

But I sent it to my adult editor. I didn't have a children's editor. Um Jennifer Hershey. Uh Uh

Trying to remember, were we at Harper Collins at the time, or Was it still Avon? I think it was still Avon. It hadn't yet been Avon got bought by Harper Collins, which is how I became a Harper Collins author. Um And she read it and she called me up and she said, This is great. What happens next? And I said, Send me a contract and we will both find out. So

Bless her, she did. And so I went back to writing it'cause now it was actually Something that actually had a delivery date attached. And I Did not have the time.

To write it in. It wasn't like I had more time. And I remember What I did was I had a notebook. By the side of my bed.

And instead of Reading three or four pages a night and then turning off the light and going to sleep. I would write Maybe fifty words. Of Caroline.

Which doesn't seem much. Right before bed. Right before bed. So I wasn't writ uh reading before bed, I was just writing before bed. But I'd go to bed and I would reread what I'd written on Carline and I would do You know? Five or six lines. O Carline.

Um But if you do it that way. You know. You've written a page a week? And so it it

It kept moving forward. And then we went on a Cruise. A fundraising cruise for the comic book legal defence fund, which is a first amendment thing. And

I was working on American Gods and I Did not pack. Hacking era. The American God's notebooks.

But I did have the Carline book with me. So on that cruise I Got to write quite a bit. More Caroline. And then Uh

A couple of months later. I was starting to despair of ever finishing American Gods because I've been writing it by that point for at least eighteen months and figured that I had About a year to go and uh Just said. Fuck. Um

Right. Caroline. and just finished it and sent it off to my publisher and it's like here is a book, you can publish this and they're like That's great, but we'll wait for American guards. Do you tend to work on multiple projects at once? I used to.

I used to be really good at working on multiple projects at once. I think I have to start. Um I think I have to Start accepting that I'm not as good anymore.

A fact. Um What does that mean? It means that In the old days when I was young, the

I would have at least three things on the go. Which was great because if I got stuck on any one of them I would do the other. Um even when I was writing American Cards, I would always have the next of the sort of the coming to America short stories

in my head. So if I got stuck on Shadow, I would just take a week and I'd do one of the Coming to America stores. And then I go back to shadow again and But These days I don't think I'm as good at that. Anymore.

I I think I am. Um, I think it's great to have three or four things going on. But there is that point where I start looking at myself and going, actually I'm getting less done. I'm not Doing that thing where I get

Stuck on project day. So I just Immediately. Snip over to project B. It takes me a little bit Ramping up time to get to the headspace now, Project B.

And At the point where I have project A B C and D all waiting for me. What I do is look at them Make a noise like Lurch from the Adams family. You know one of those Oo Oh kind of noises and I go off and make a cup of tea and play with ash or something. Um

So I think actually I it's one of those things where you Just Know thyself. I think I now have to start Going now, just just one thing at a time.

Which also means I'm I'm gonna have to say no. To more. Introductions and things. Yeah. And I love doing introductions. I I I I I Introductions you mean writing introductions. Writing introductions to other people's work, writing introductions and essays and things. Where you go.

Here is the thing I love. I wanna I can get it to the world. I can tell people why I love this thing. And

Maybe they'll discover it. And every now and then and you know Sometimes You know your introduction makes no real difference in the scheme of things. Um

And then Sometimes uh you know, James Thurber. Um I was told I could bring Yeah, the the

They would bring the The thirteen clocks. back into print if I wrote an introduction to it. So it's like yes, I'm writing an introduction to it. And then because it has an introduction by me. I've run into Many hundreds of people who I assume are representatives of thousands of people.

Um over the years who said, you know, I I Picked up that book because your name was on the cover and oh my god, it's become my favorite book. You know, I read it to my kids, it's amazing. And I go, Good, that's that's what it's for. That's why you do this. You mentioned uh writing right before bed. So I'd love to talk about the Maybe not the scheduling, but the timing of writing. So I was was doing prep for this conversation.

And came across an interview in which But you said that for for nonfiction you can kind of write wherever it happens to fall. If it's a script or something else, but that for novels very often you tend to write between, say, one and six PM where you'll handle email, maybe writing a blog post and so on in the morning. And uh I'd love to chat about that because uh

Many of the writers I've spoken to and I'm sure it's it differs person to person, but tend to write either very late or very early because they feel like they avoid distraction. Um From From the age of about Twenty

Two when I was a young journalist. Twenty six, twenty seven, a starting out. Comics writer. Um You know, all all through there I was a like

Late late night writer. Um nothing really happened until the kids were in bed. Nine o'clock. I might have fafter out a little bit during the day, but now

It's all done and now I'm getting down to work. And um Uh. Two or three o'clock in the morning, and I'm writing in England at this point, I may phone a friend in America Just

To talk. Enough to make sure that I'm awake. Yeah. Um but So that's what I did.

And um And I was a smoker and a coffee drinker and it was great. I moved to America in ninety two. Gave up smoking.

Ninety three. Um Stop drinking coffee, went over to tea. Um Um

Tried being a late night ride. Tried carry on being a Late night writer. And gradually realized that I wasn't really any more what tended to happen. With somewhere around one in the morning, I'd be writing away. And then I would lift my head from the keyboard at

Four o'clock in the morning. And have three thousand pages of the letter M and um Just go, Okay, that This doesn't really work anymore for me. And then I started Rescheduling.

Um trying different things out. Part of What I discovered Particularly about being a novelist. Is

Writing a novel works best if you can do the same day over and over again. Hm. The closer you can come. To just Groundhog Day.

You just repeat that day. You you set up a day that works for yourself. Um You know, I I The last

Novel. That I actually Wrote Um I was at Tori Amos's wonderful house in Florida. She has this

Lovely sort of House on the water that she's lent me. Many times to go and write in. Um And I went down there.

And I would get up in the morning, I would Go for a jog. Come back. Um Do my yoga.

Uh Get dressed. Um And um Get in the car, drive down to a little cafe.

Where there were just enough people around that I knew that other people existed. But nobody that I would ever be tempted to talk to. And I would Order myself. Cup of large cup of green tea.

Sit in the corner. And just start writing. And I would do that day. Over and over and over and over.

And you know couple of months later looked up and and I had the ocean at the end of the lane, which was only meant to have been a short story anyway. Just Kept going. Um And I I

That I think works really, really well. I also think that the The most important thing For human beings Is

To be aware of the change. You know the The biggest problem we run into is going, This is who I am, this is what I'm like. This is how I function. While failing to notice that you don't

Do that anymore. I'm perfectly aware that I may one day become one of those people Who wakes up early in the morning and goes and writes. Um my friend Gene Wolf

Who is Um Now in his late eighties and is one of Um Yeah, the finest

writers that America has. Um For years. was a an editor of a Magazine about

factories. I think it was called plant engineering. And so he'd get up at four o'clock in the morning and write for an hour. Um before anything else. Before the day started, before we had to leave for work. And before anybody else was up.

And that was how he did it. Um I cannot imagine. getting up in the morning and just writing. That's not how my head works. I need a while To get here.

Um But I can absolutely imagine that one day I'll One of those morning writers.

From having been a late night writer. In my youth and an afternoon writer. In my in my middle age, in my dotage, I could absolutely become a morning writer. In your dotage. Uh I think that's gonna take a while. Uh

I do want to Ask you a question related to a name that came up a little earlier. And that is a uh it This of course I think I'm getting right because it comes from a reliable source which is your blog. My blog is a pretty reliable stuff.

And uh for those those who know your work. outside of the blog, I'd really encourage to to read some of your work on the blog. Uh there's some really touching Personal work, uh one in particular about uh your gorgeous white dog whose name I'm I'm currently Just ending. Such a beautiful piece. Uh that it it in fact, um

I owe you thanks for because it led in in part there are many factors, but to me getting My first dog uh as an adult, Molly, which I put off for decades. So thank you for that. But this question Beautiful piece. Related. to Holly.

So and I'm gonna use this as a very sneaky way to ask you a question that you Probably dislike being asked. And it involves fifty seven year olds. So my understanding is you were convinced Two

Speak. To your daughter's class. About where ideas come from. And

Uh What I what I noted here, I'm not gonna ask it that way, but the the line that stuck out was you get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. Well what if dot dot dot what if you woke up with wings? If only if only real life was like it is in Hollywood musicals. I wonder dot dot dot if this goes on. This is one I really liked. You know if this goes on, telephones are going to start talking to each other and cut out the middle band. Wouldn't it be interesting if dot dot dot uh And the

The question I'm gonna ask is a follow up. It doesn't have to map perfectly to this. But Uh I would love to hear the genesis story of the graveyard book.

And the reason I ask about that book specifically is that it is my My absolute favorite Uh Fiction. Audio book.

Of all time. And it is it is I remember the exact moment when I finished The graveyard book. In audio. And there are multiple versions people do ask me, I have not listened to the Unstable version. And so

I'm sure it's spectacular, but not not to sound creepy, I do find your voice very soothing. Um And I finished it as my plane was um not my plane, let me rephrase, as a plane was uh landing. And I had a few minutes before we landed and I thought about restarting the book. So it's it's it's had a

A wonderful place in my heart and my mind. Where did that book come from? So I actually I can give a slightly Better answer to that now. that I could have done a year ago or I have done for previous years because I found something accidentally.

Uh recently. Um Which Was uh which Gave me an insight.

So I was twenty Five years old? Um

It would have been nineteen Eighty four, eighty five, maybe even eight into eighty six. Um I was living in Sussex, in a little town. In a very tall house.

Um My dad owned the house. Uh, actually what he owned was a shop underneath, but the house sort of came Came with it. Um

Because little old English towns go back. For a long time. The house was at least three hundred years old. Um And it was

Across a little lane from a Country graveyard. And the house was incredibly tall and incredibly thin. You get a couple of rooms and then you get stairs. And I had a son who at that point was

Two years old? Um And his favorite thing With his little tricycle. And the problem with little tricycles.

is you cannot ride them around houses like that, otherwise you die. You hit the stairs and you die. Yeah. Um So every day I would take him and his little tricycle Over the road.

Church. And he would peddle. Happily. Round and round the paths.

Um Through the gravestones. Yeah. And I remember Just a

The thought process. I remember going, He looks so happy here. Looks really comfortable. There is something very sweet about a little kid. Riding a tricycle Through a graveyard.

And I thought I could do a story about wouldn't it be fun to do a story about that? You could do a story like a it would be like, you know, a kid In a great uh Getting brought up by dead people. And then I thought actually Kipling already kind of did that once with

The jungle book. Which is a kid in a jungle being brought up by wild animals and teaching him the things that wild animals know. So I would have to have A kid in the graveyard. Being taught the things. The dead people know.

And I went up. To my Office. Sat down at my typewriter.

And started to write. Now, when I've told people this in the past, I've said I wrote a couple of pages. And realise that. Wasn't good enough. And I was wrong.

I actually wrote Um an entire first chapter I discovered. Because About A year ago looking for something else, I found it.

And uh Wasn't very good. What was fascinating and delightful about it. was the portrait of the kid.

Which was very obviously a Really actually looking back on it, quite good pen portrait of my son Mike. Who is now a that you did that you did. That you know, I'm describing the baby and I only knew one, so so it's it's Mike. Um And that was really interesting.

But Story doesn't work. And I think I I forget I think I've got a Um There's this there's a demon in it. I don't have um who I think is the person who Winds up.

The person who who kind of accepts him into the graveyard. Um Mm. You know, nothing's quite right, but the uh there's a central idea there.

But I wrote I remember writing that. And just Going, okay, this is a better idea than I am a writer. Mm.

So I need to put this off. And about So A decade later? I came back.

Tried it again. And this time. You know. At least according to memory, it was only a couple of pages and again I went, Oh no Still not good enough for this.

May I pause for one second? You must have Ideas for potential stories all the time. Yeah, but this was different. This was one where I knew I knew it had legs.

And I knew it was real and I knew it was Good. Um And in fact. You know, it was interesting. There was a point where I thought I wasn't

Gonna Do it. And I kind of gave the idea to Terry Pratchett. We've been we'd had our photos taken In a graveyard and it would We were talking about graveyards and kids.

And I said, Well there's this book that I was gonna write and this is what I was gonna do in it. And what is lovely is Terry didn't do any of That exactly, but he took He wrote a book called Johnny and the Dead. Which was

Sort of taking some of the stuff. But it wasn't close enough. That I couldn't then still do my story. Um What was great is I I knew that this was still important and I still wanted Tell the story and over the years I would just

Let it accumulate. And Finally. Um In about two thousand and three

I finished writing I think it was a Nancy Boys. I which I also listen to on a on audio. Ah, Lenny Henry. Isn't he brilliant? Incredible. Incredible. Such a great read Um

And I got To the end of Ansi Boys and I thought you know I I don't think I'm getting any better. I think this is now

As a writer. Um probably me. That's probably it. I may improve. You know, a tiny bit, but it's not gonna be the leaps and bounds that I know that I was.

So I have absolutely no excuse. But When I've started the other two times and it didn't work. I started with chapter one.

I'm gonna start right in the middle. And I wrote The first Two pages of Um

Of of the witch's headstone. Chapter four. And Did Emotionally exactly the same thing I always do. I I had always done at that point.

With the graveyard, but we just go oh it's just not good enough. It's not good enough. My daughter Maddy Because at this point. We're on we're in the Cayman Islands on a small holiday, me, Maddie and Holly Maddie comes out the sea, wanders over to me, and says, What are you what are you doing? I said, I'm writing a story. She says, Read it to me.

So I read her the first Page and a half that I'd written. And she said, What happens next? So I kept going. I think I would

I would absolutely have been capable of Giving up and failing at that point. Except Maddie Wanted to know what happened next. So I Kept writing and by the end of that I'd written a story that felt like it worked.

I had the tone. I had the voice. I had Silas. I had all of that stuff. What a great character, by the way. So lovely. Silas. And then I started at the beginning. And I

But the The one thing that I have no idea where it came from. Because it was just sitting in the notebook. When I came to start It's like I'd written it.

At some point in the previous Five years. Knowing that It would be You know, knowing that I would have to start

At some point. And knowing that that was The first line of the story. And Feeling kind of

You know, having very mixed feelings about that because going well on the whole This story is gonna be very. Loving. It's gonna be very tender. It's gonna be about growth. It's gonna be about Families. Villages, it's gonna be about people.

But The first few pages. Are gonna be absolutely terrifying. Um That was the first line.

Oh yeah, yeah. I think you d you certainly delivered on the first few pages being Very, very terrifying. Um I'm gonna go back and listen to that again. Maybe I'll try ensemble this time around. The ensemble is real I mean, you know, I Um

And I'm not just saying this because for me You know, listening To one of my own audiobooks is a lot like Back when you were young and we had answering machines and you would be Listening to messages people had left for you and then you'd suddenly

Hit your own voice. And it's just like no, I don't sound like that. Um But I

But it's Derek Jacoby, who is one of England's greatest actors as the narrator. You the cast of people like Miriam Margolis, Reese Shears Smith. Fabulous cast. So you mentioned a name. That I was planning on bringing up anyway.

And that is Terry Pratchett. Yeah. And I think many

People who uh at least in the United States. are less familiar with Terry than perhaps they they should be. Could you Tell us. Who Terry is? And how you first met?

Terry Pratchett. Um Later Sir Terry Pratchett? was an English writer. Um who died In March twenty fifteen.

Um He was a humorist, a satirist, best known for The Discworld novels set on a flat earth Which is on the back of uh four elephants on the back of an enormous turtle swimming through space. And uh

He was my friend. Um Terry and I met. When his first book First Disc World book.

The colour of magic. was due to come out in paperback. And uh we met For years and years. We would tell everybody that we met in a Chinese restaurant.

And uh Again a few years ago I found My desk diary. From nineteen eighty five. And I thought, Ah, there's Terry and me. Meeting

In February. Uh Nineteen eighty five. I wonder which Um Chinese restaurant it was, and it turned out we actually met on like the twenty eighth of January and it was Bertarelli's Italian restaurant in Is it Good Street? I think it was Good Street. Um

Proving that memory is gloriously fallible. Um Embarrassingly so since I'd actually filmed a piece to camera in a Chinese restaurant um about Terry's passing. Um But it w it's

I you know, I was a young journalist. Uh Terry at the time was working as the press officer. For the Uh Central Electricity Board.

in the UK. And um We hit it off. It in a way. That's just that sort of thing where you go Oh, you have the same kind of mind.

That I have. Not exactly, but the Venn diagram of overlap. Is It was the point where we got onto the subject of grimoire. Of occult but

Um And Terry mentioned But he And

Come up with one called the Necro Telecomnicon. The book of the telephone numbers of the dead. And I So that's Really weird. I've just come up with one called the Lever Fulvarum Paganarum.

And the book of yellow colored pages. And it's going, Oh We have the same kind of head that goes to the same kind of places. And We became Friendly uh

friendlier after a while Terry would start sending me His books. To read as he was writing them, um, you know, uh A floppy disc would arrive. And it would have been a little bit more.

Thirty thousand words on it of a novel. Or my phone would ring and Terry would say, Hello, it's me. So which is funnier? And So

I Had written um A book called Don't Panic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion. Uh, which was great. I got to work with Douglas Adams, I got to rummage through Douglas's Filing cabinets and obscurity stuff. I'd I

Written a whole book of Who Douglas was and what Hitchhikers was. And I realised by the end of it that I could write in that style. Class English

Humor. With funny footnotes and things like that. That was that was something I could do. And I Had an idea. For a book.

Inspired really by Um Reading the Jew of Malta. Hm. I've been reading uh Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, and there's just a line in it. Where these evil Jews meet.

And they compare evil. That they've done. And I thought You know, you could do that scene With demons.

And it will be really nice if You got demon number one who's done lots of evil, demon number two has done lots of evil and e Number three. It just Hasn't really you know.

And that was the start. Uh so I wrote And I had this idea about a baby swap. Um kind of like the omen, but it all goes wrong and it becomes a nice kid. So I wrote Five thousand words.

Of Um This thing. And I sent it to a few friends to look at and then Sandman and Books of Magic took over my life and my time and

Didn't really think about it. I knew that it was a thing and I knew I'd get to it one day. And then I got a phone call. From Terry. How much later was this? Maybe eight months, nine months.

And he says, Yeah, that that thing you sent me. Are you doing anything with it? And I said, Well no, I'm doing sandman, I'm doing buttons magic. He said, Well I know what happens next.

So either Sell me the idea and what you've written so far. Or we can write it together. No. As far as I was concerned, that was a lot like Michelangelo ringing you up and saying, Yeah, do you want to paint a ceiling together this weekend? You know, you going, I I loved Terry's

Craft. Terry became Somewhere in there. before the arrival of J.K. Rowling, the best selling novelist in the UK. Tens of millions of copies. Millions upon millions of copies. This was before that.

This was you know, he just Retired. From um They they Electricity board to become a full time writer.

I knew how good he was. And I'm like This is a fabulous apprenticeship. So Even though I didn't have the time.

I said yes. And my life You know, I look back on it and I'm just really glad that I was twenty seven, twenty eight. When I was doing this because I couldn't do it now. I mean, just physic and mentally, couldn't do it now. But I would write to Sandman Until midnight.

I would write the books of magic. From midnight until about two thirty. And I would write good omens from two thirty until about six AM and then I would get up at one o'clock in the afternoon. And my answer mach answering machine Would have a little blinking light on it, and I would press the button.

Um The tape would rewind and then Terry Pratchett's voice would come out of it. And he'd go, Get up, get up, you bastard. I've just written a good bit. Um

You know, that was uh So that was that was the process of writing. It was very fast, very mad. Um That was the first draft. Second draft took us took us much longer.

Um But You know, we we had good omens. We had this wonderful, incredibly collaborative book. Um It was almost immediately bought by Hollywood.

And Terry and I went out and had one of those hellish, awful Hollywood experience is That you laugh at when other people tell you in their stories about them because you're like It can't be that bad. It's like no, it really is that bad. It really was. That bad.

And then Over the years Terry Gilliam tried to make it into a film which we We love the idea of Uh then we were gonna

Do it as a T V series and we couldn't really find somebody to adapt it. And eventually Terry Terry and I had a deal That we would never do anything Individually.

On good omens. It had to be together or not at all. And then One day he emailed me. And uh he said, Look, you have to do this. You have to do this.

Because You're the only other person who has the same amount of love for and understanding of the old girl. that I have and I want to see it before the lights go out. And then And I said, Okay.

And then Terry died. Which Meant that now it had become this sort of last request. And If

The upcoming Good Omen series is good. Which one? Believe it is. A lot of what makes it good. A lot of what

'Cause I was the show runner. I wrote it. And I show ran it. But I think what I'm Makes it. Good.

His I wasn't prepared On it. And I am normally very prepared to compromise. I'm encouraging

When other people want to bring ideas to the table, I'm like, Yeah, go do something fun with this. I've already done the book or whatever. But in this case I had a Terry Pratchett in the back of my head. Who I had to please. And You know, the producers would say, Well, Neil, I know you've written this sequence

Where Agnes Nutta, the witch is Taken out and burned and It's you know, we have villages and we have It's the sixteen forties and you've got a giant bonfire and an explosion and all of this kind of stuff and and um

We thought we could save a lot of money and do it just as well. If we had woodcuts of what happened and the narrator Telling the story. And I would be like

Okay. And then I would stop and I would think. What would Terry think about that? I'm like Terry?

Would have nothing polite to say about any of these people. And it's like, you know, I'm sorry, we're we're gonna have to do it. The way I wrote it. And the way it is in the book. We're not

Doing it with woodcuts. And Um And it was like that all the way through. It was like, you know, just trying to hold the line and make this thing that Terry would have been proud of. And using Using stuff but

We came up with Um In the book, using stuff that we've come up with Talking after the book. Stuff that we would have put into the next book if there ever had been one?

Um and just making it Um All something that Terry would have been proud of. Um And it's been really

Wonderful. This South by South West has been the first time anybody has seen Anything. From good omens, you know, and we showed some clips. I'm hearing audiences laugh. Um

It was kind of amazing. Was like, Oh, this it does work. It is They're liking it. They're loving it. It does work. You showed me um only a very short clip, but I know the book.

And I'm familiar with it. And with With the work you've done or any work or characters I deeply care about. I collect comics for my entire Uh childhood.

Still have probably ten thousand polybag comics that I've refused to get rid of. And every time a comic book movie would be made in my younger years because they were not done generally very well.

I would sort of peek through A crack in my fingers to see how characters would turn out. And it was it was always uh very stressful for me because I had so much invested. Uh in Many different characters. And uh just I'll give a

A thank you to Hugh Jackman for getting uh Logan and Wolverine right, which was a huge relief. And seeing this clip, it it really gave me the feeling that You'd pull it off. That it that it that it lived up to My experience as a reader and a listener. I think mostly we have.

Um And I think that Is A lot of that is casting. Um

Michael Sheen and David Tallant. Were perfect. And They've never really been any in anything before. Um

Because They go up for the same parts. Because they are very similar actors and people were like, Why would you cast them? Why don't you go w you know they It's like casting the same person you go Yeah, it kind of is, actually, and it's one of the reasons why it works so well. They have joked

about and I'm not sure if they're joking about if ever I write A stage play version of good omens. They would go on tour with it. And alternate roles each night. Wow.

I want to uh Well, first I should say and and we'll put this certainly in the show notes and everywhere else and in the it people will have already heard in the introduction, but where where can people Learn about good omits. Uh That's a really good question. Well th you know, one thing that I would recommend you do is

Read the book. Um Uh Good omens, the novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Uh

It and and It won't spoil anything for you. With the T V show. There's enough stuff in there.

That I put in for people. Who knew the book. I I kind of there are there are Easter eggs in there where Only somebody who's read the book will know that something is funny or know why something's happened. But there's also things that

People who read the book will not be expecting. So that's that's the first thing. Um YouTube or any Amazon Prime ads have the ad for good omens up, the trailer. You can go and watch that.

Um It's a lot. Talkier than the trailer. A lot of it is things going bang. Because that's what they like putting in trailers. Um, if it were me, I would my trailer would have just been sort of like, you know

three minutes of two characters talking. It's like here you go, here's the trailer. If you like this, you'll like the show. Um But I think very wisely they put in, you know giant walls of fire and heaven and hell and hellhounds and and all of the glorious stuff.

You mentioned uh words. Uh Apprenticeship. Uh.

What are the types of things that you learned? From Terry or picked up. The biggest thing looking back on it That I learned from Terry. was a willingness

To go forward. Without knowing what happens. You might know what happens next, but you don't know what happens after that, but it's okay because You're a grown up. And

You will figure it out. Um you know the the Metaphors. Um

For writing a novel. And George R R Martin. For example. Divides writers.

Into architects and gardeners. And I can be an architect if I have to. But I'd rather be a gardener. I would rather. Plant the seeds, water them.

and figure out what I'm growing as they grow and then prune it and trim it and You know. Pleach it. Whatever I need to do. Um

to make something beautiful that appears intentional, but at the end of the day you have to allow For accidents and randomness and just what happens when things grow. So The joy of Good omens really

I mean the best thing about good omens was having Terry Pratchett as an audience. 'Cause if I could make Terry laugh. I knew. Yeah, that that

It's like hitting that Bell. Mm You know, hitting the thing in the circus with the hammer. If you you Bing the bell at the top.

Um That's what I did when I could make Terry laugh. He uh He's no longer with us. And uh

I'd be curious to know how he faced mortality. Yeah. It because I I for instance have Alzheimer's on both sides of my family, so I've had the opportunity to observe people with Alzheimer's, which is can be very, very difficult.

How did he How did he approach his own his own mortality? Terry made An astonishingly powerful I mean he he Faced it head on and he made Uh

Two or three incredibly powerful Documentaries. One about Alzheimer's. Um The one that ripped me up.

Emotionally. Um Was the one about assisted suicide. It was the one about The right to die.

Which Terry became a very firm believer in And made his film as a as a piece of polemic about should you be Should he be allowed?

To turn off. Should you be allowed to go Okay, this is the situation I'm in and I'm in this body and I I'm done. And uh You know, he followed a man to Switzerland.

Yeah. Yeah. He went through the end of life process and they turned off the cameras while he did. Um And it was incredibly moving.

The last time I saw him. Confided in me. Very proudly. That he did have. The

The death cocktail. And uh That it was Hidden away. But that it was there for him when he was ready.

And I n knew at that moment he was never gonna take it. Because Terry had a kind of rear brain Alzheimer's. Memory was basically okay, but but Shape. Won't you?

The physical world had Fallen slightly apart on him. Um You know, he couldn't see things, he couldn't perceive objects. He he could still think straight, but But

All of your spatial recognition, all of your object recognition stuff. And I thought, even if you've got this stuff You never You can't find it.

You can't get something from a hidden place. Nobody else is gonna get something from a hidden place for you. Mm. And also I thought and you've hit

You're now actually beyond the point where you ever wanted to be. You didn't want to be here. You want it to have stopped. Four or five months ago. But now you're here.

And if you're here, y you're here to the end. Um Indeed, a few months later. Yep. Fell into unconsciousness and

A few months after that. He stopped completely. Um But it was inspiring. It was inspiring Watch Terry

Mm-hmm. Talk about Alzheimer's, bringing Alzheimer's which everybody Has to deal with one way or the other. into the public consciousness as something That was okay to talk about, not as something slightly shameful that happens to grandpa.

Um And also just talk about the right to die. Talking about it as a as a human right. And it You know, I I really

And I understand or you know, you can list out to me all of the reasons why it's a bad idea and Look, you know, here's a creepy family and if they could kill mum For the money they wouldn't right now they've got her in a home, but you know, they They would have killed her and announced that she wanted to do it herself, or or whatever. I I I get all that. But also.

I get that. Um The right not to be alive. The right to end it all. The right to go, Okay, I've I've come as far as I can in this and

And it's okay to stop before Before I become something that is a Shallow shadow. Of who I once was.

Um You know that that That has to be a right too. How does it feel as as such a close friend of his to be able to To share.

This work. That you created together. And too. Yeah. Mostly it's wonderful and then sometimes it isn't.

And um Saturday night. Amazon had taken over a You know. Nineteen thousand square foot lot.

Turned it into the garden of earthly delights. Um, it has a bookshop in a corner and the hairdressers and a giant tree in the middle that serves alcohol. It has

m wings that if you stand in front of them and activate some kind of Instagram filter Um Or maybe it was the Snapchat filter. Well make the wings start to flap. Um

Or you know, just filled with wonderfulness and I'm there and that we have singing nuns and then a queen cover band come on and And I'm looking around and there's John Ham and David Tennant and Michael Sheen and all my my guys from Like lovely.

Um American Gods Cast. come over and they're hanging out. I'm getting to introduce it's like introducing you two families and Um And I was kind of melancholy. Because

And I knew that I should just be enjoying it. I knew I should just be going, This is this is magical. This is this is the kind of fun, wonderful thing that you You don't get very often in your life. And I should just be Exulting in it.

And instead I'm just thinking I wish Terry were here. He would have loved the nuns. He would have he would have had a great time with the Queen cover band and he would have been Just You know.

grumbling to me about tiny details and enjoying it. Um Oh Taking enormous pleasure in tiny details and you know, having Deciding which colour wings he liked having best. He would have loved it.

And He's not around. And then By the same token,

I know Terry well enough. The The way that Terry was built.

And who Terry was. We probably would never have got to this point had Terry been alive. Because If you're doing something like making a big T V show or something.

Something this big, this complicated. Where things can go wrong. Sometimes When things are getting weird or things are going wrong, or you know, the BBC are going a bit mad, or whatever.

The only thing you can do is just Focus on the outcome and just keep going and keep Steady course. And so on and so forth. And I

Knew Terry well enough and worked with Terry long enough to know that he Was absolutely constitutionally incapable of doing that. You know, at the point where things any any one of a dozen places where All we would have to have done is just Keep on going and You know.

Terry would have been making the The phone calls. to the head of the B B C or the head of Amazon or you know Uh you know, telling Jeff Bezos exactly what he thought of him. Just the wrong thing to do right now. So there's also that sort of weirdness of going

Had Terry been around we Probably would never have got here. And getting but getting here was all about making this thing for Terry. Which he also wasn't here for. Which is why I'm say you know, so so uh

Giant. Interwoven panoply of of Stranions. Absolute joy. in having made it. Joy in having made it for Terry.

Because um Nothing else would have stopped me. Writing novels. The Three and a half, four years.

Um but that did. I think I have to imagine he'd be thrilled. To see you in this amazing circus. Uh Just before.

This piece of work is released to Hopefully millions more people will be impacted by the work. I think and I think he would have loved I think he would have loved so much of this. And also being Terry

He would have loved the fact that then people will come and pick up good omens the book. And then they'll go and read Disquel books and that will make Terry even happier. Neil. This has been so much fun. Can't be ninety minutes already. Ninety minutes.

That just that that flu. It did. It did. And I I certainly hope it's not the last time we have a chance to I would really love to and Uh I know we have

Well, let me not state it that way. Many, many of my fans are your fans. And Just as Terry shared his gifts with the world, you continue to share yours, and it has an impact. It helped me through some very tough times. Was able to transport me. Delight me.

shock me, scare me, and take me through a whole range of emotions I didn't at the time even know I had access to. So I wanna thank you for Making good art. And sharing it with the world. You've done a great job. You are so ridiculously welcome.

Thank you. And uh Do you have any? Closing comments, thoughts, remarks, anything you'd like to say before we wrap up? No, not really. You know, I

Genuinely enjoyed One one of the great things about having you as a fan, um, is The books arrive. From you. And they actually get red. Um and you know

And I learn from them. Because you go off and and Explore parts of things. That I'm Never going to.

Um And and so I appreciate that too enormously. Thank you. So much. And uh for everybody listening.

We will include links to everything we've discussed. Including fountain pens. Including fountain pens. This might be the time to buy some stock. And Uh everything that came up will be in the show notes, as always at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. You can just search. Neil.

or Gayman and it will pop right up. And uh Neil, once again, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate it. And To everyone listening. Until next time. Read widely, check out good omens.

And Chat soon. Bye. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.

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